


a kinder definition

by illumes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blue Lions Route, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Byleth, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death But It's Okay Because They Live At The End, Suicidal Thoughts, get ready for... time travel trauma, mostly felix-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:49:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21846211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumes/pseuds/illumes
Summary: He should tell the professor about phantom wounds. Or, he could talk about the nightmares. Fingers splay over his throat, pressing down the soft skin of his neck. Perhaps he should admit to knowing what it feels to have his head swiped clean from his shoulders. The mere thought summons some surge of discomfort that forces his eyes shut, a veil of white static clouding a memory he isn’t sure is real.“I’ve died many times, haven’t I?”“Felix,” the professor says. “You’re not weaker for needing to be saved.”That’s not the point, but it is.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 42
Kudos: 315





	a kinder definition

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for canon-typical violence, multiple deaths, not-very-graphic descriptions of corpses, and a very, very, very morally grey Byleth. Glenn is here, and he's a gremlin. It's Sylvix, but mostly Felix-centric, though Sylvain does have One (1) POV which only exists because Felix's refusal to self-analyze was wearing me the fuck out. Anyway, this is a thing. Enjoy!

**i.**

The first time Felix dies, he thinks his father might be proud of him.

It’s not martyrdom, though. It’s an idiot’s mistake. His body lunges two steps ahead without thinking, a frantic shove of his arm knocking Sylvain into the ground and out of Miklan’s way before the latter’s lance sinks into the wrong target’s flesh. 

_I can’t die like this_ , he thinks, but the skin on his back splits as the spearhead stabs an exit wound between the slit of crushed ribs. A man’s brown eyes leer into his own, glazed with anger, with disbelief, with a hatred that even a barely conscious Felix knows is reserved for somebody else. _Felix_ , a voice screams, though it sounds drowned out. 

More slips away from him than life. As a wounded lung heaves for breath, four years’ worth of walls collapse into nothing, and what remains of willed crassness is quick to sling embers of scalding rebukes at his own idiotic recklessness before finally burning out, leaving the near lifeless child to submit to the disquieting warmth of his last thoughts. _Felix_ , the voice behind him calls. _Felix_. Though just as brown and almost as round, the eyes staring into him are far less kind than the ones he would like to see, but as a haze of violet clouds his vision, the dying boy pretends.

Miklan yanks the lance out of Felix’s body. Felix staggers backward, crumpling limply to the ground. 

**ii.**

“Where _the fuck_ is it?” Felix says, flinging yet another textbook into a pile of discarded items — a pile that should _not_ have been as big as it was considering how few possessions Felix actually kept in his room.

“You sure have a lot of training weights.” Sylvain says, settling into the bed across him. Felix takes a split-second to make a mental note of the barely-there look of disgust on Sylvain’s face; it's almost comical how a hatred of unclean spaces is something Sylvain keeps secret, all to forge a meticulously-crafted facade of nonchalance that women _apparently_ found attractive. Not that Felix cared.

“The professor,” Felix snaps. “Now shut up and help me find my thing.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “You know I can’t help you unless you tell me what _your thing_ is.”

“The _thing!_ ”

“The _thing_.”

“A spur.” Felix tosses a copy of _Legends of Chivalry_ into the pile. Why the fuck does he own this? 

“A spur?” Sylvain laughs. “That’s what all the fuss is about?”

“You don’t get it — whatever. It’s not important.” Felix collapses back into the bed, kneading at his temples. Half annoyed and half unsettled, he yanks a pillow over his head, shifts so that he faces the wall instead of Sylvain. Something like memory flickers when his eyes squeeze shut: _A pair of angry eyes. A flash of pain._ _Blood_ — _a lot of it._

What?

“It sounds like it’s important.” Sylvain says. 

Felix lifts the pillow from his head, brows furrowed in blatant annoyance. He makes the mistake of flitting his gaze upward, and witnesses a pair of brown eyes staring back at him, warmer than they have any right to be. 

Another memory-thing. _A lance. It’s Sylvain’s._

“There’s something on your mind,” Sylvain says.

Felix doesn’t claim to be any good at remembering. Mostly because he strives to be the opposite, strives to be good at forgetting. When memories are mostly bruises, the best way to cut through pain is to pretend there’s nothing there, to bar even the slightest touch from brushing against the soft tissue of contusion.

Still, there’s something oddly suspicious about their missions at Garreg Mach. Sometimes, he swears things turn out differently than what everyone claims, though his confidence in his memory is shaky at best. Battles are life and death, after all, and sometimes the stress of chaos can produce fears vivid enough to seem real. 

Ingrid plummeted from the sky when a well-aimed arrow sank into her pegasus’s throat and sent the creature into a crazed, pained frenzy, but his friend insists no such incident ever happened — and Ingrid is hardly the type to lie. A scar should have marred the boar prince’s skin when a mage slung fire at his cheek, but Felix finds no evidence of damage on the beast’s face, and neither Mercedes nor Manuela recall having to care for a burn of such nature. Later, Ashe practically gushes about the professor’s valor at Gautier territory, how the Sword of The Creator slung across the room, spinelike discs coiling around the rod of the stolen hero relic before Miklan could drive sharpened bone into his younger brother’s flesh.

It’s strange, because Felix knows it to be true. He was there when the professor saved Sylvain’s life. He saw it with his own eyes. Yet, a nagging disbelief persists, insistent that pieces of the story were missing. Fingers trail down his shirt, hovering over a spot on his abdomen where he thinks pain should be. He presses his palm against skin. He can’t tell which notion is stranger: that no blood oozes from unwounded flesh, or that some deep, unfathomable conviction within him insists there should be.

Felix sits himself upright.

“Felix,” Sylvain says. “What’s wrong?”

Here is the part where Felix would snap that he was no longer a child, dismiss Sylvain’s offers of help with an acerbic remark or two. The retort is there, at the tip of his tongue, embarrassment taking shape as venom, always demanding the opposite of what he wants. Denying vulnerability as a means of pretending it didn’t exist.

Sylvain sits by his side, gaze still fixed on Felix in anticipation of the inevitable; he’s known Felix long enough to expect his rejection. But Felix meets his eyes — despite his own instincts, despite his venom-shaped-shame — and finds every barbed protest dying in his throat. 

Softly, Sylvain says, “You have to tell me what’s wrong.” 

But Felix can’t let weakness win. “It’s nothing. It’s whatever.” He tears his gaze away. “Go find someone else to bother.”

Sylvain sighs. “Alright.” Discontent colours his tone, if only slightly. “But if you need me, I’m—”

“You’re here,” Felix cuts. The warmth of Sylvain’s eyes is familiar in a disquietingly saddening way. “I know.”

**iii.**

Faerghus claims that the greatest act of love any person could commit is to die for another. When Felix is old enough to ask why he doesn’t have a mother, they tell him she loved him so much she surrendered her life for him.

It’s not a big deal, really. Most things aren’t. Castle Fraldarius has an unspoken rule about speaking of sad things — don’t: grief is a waste of time and good knights don’t waste time; good knights march forward, slinging their burdens behind them.

Which makes Felix think he might not make a good knight. Felix isn’t sad, not really, but Glenn is mean and tears come easy, and none of the responses he throws at his brother can quite match up to Glenn’s easy, piercing sarcasm. It takes too much of Felix’s will to keep his voice from quivering as he scrambles his mind for a retort with the least bit of fire to counter the particularly scalding jab Glenn had just made.

But Rodrigue rushes to his side before Felix can get the chance. He shoos Glenn away and takes Felix to a bench outside the training grounds and lets Felix rest his head on his shoulder until Felix comes to the abrupt realization that eight is too old an age to be resting your head on your father’s shoulder. He tears himself away, flushing red with anger, with embarrassment.

“Felix.” A ragged sigh leaves Rodrigue’s lips. “My boy. Please don’t cry.”

Felix blinks. Fresh tears appear at the corners of his eyes. “I’m not,” he says, drawing in breath, “crying.”

Rodrigue rubs the heel of his palm against Felix’s cheek. “What’s this then?”

“Sweat,” Felix says. Glenn would have said _‘My eyes are training,_ ’ but Glenn doesn’t cry.

His father puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Felix, you have to tell me what Glenn said to you.”

Felix frowns. “No.”

Rodrigue lets out another sigh and slides closer to his son. He tries to offer a sympathetic gaze, but Felix shoots it down with a withering glare. 

“Felix,” Rodrigue says. “You know I can’t help you if you refuse to tell me.”

“I don’t want your help,” Felix spits. “Your help sucks.”

“Is that so? If I failed you, anyhow, please tell me how I can—”

“You don’t ever help.” Felix can feel the anger building inside him again. It’s getting really, really big. “You’d rather make excuses for him.”

Rodrigue’s eyes widen. “Pardon?”

“It’s always _Glenn is still a child!_ or _Glenn doesn’t really know what he’s saying!_ Or _Glenn_ _doesn’t mean it!_ Or—” Felix can feel it his voice building into a scream. “ _—Just don’t pay him any attention_ or _You know, you can learn something from fighting_ or _at least in the future you’ll know how to stand up for yourself!”_

“I—” Rodrigue opens his mouth, but no other words come out, and Felix takes some satisfaction in that, because his father _always_ has the right words with him and they’re _always_ true and they _always_ make him feel like his feelings should be so much smaller than they are. “I do scold him.”

“Too much, really,” Glenn says, from seemingly nowhere. He forgoes sitting on the bench and instead decides to lean against the wall and cant his head slightly toward them, wearing that typical _I’m-so-cool-because-I-don’t-care-about-anybody’s-feelings_ sort of expression that Felix insurmountably despises. 

Felix frowns. “You deserve it.”

“Crybaby.”

“Buttface.”

“Enough,” Rodrigue snaps. “Glenn, what did you say to him?”

Glenn shrugs. “I told him he was adopted.”

And that makes Rodrigue let out a sigh of relief, maybe because he thought Glenn said something worse. For the record, Glenn _did_ say something worse, but it’s not like either of them want to admit that. “Felix,” Rodrigue says, “you _know_ you are not adopted.”

“Glenn said I was stolen,” Felix seethes, “from _elf people._ ”

A wide grin spreads across Glenn’s face. “It’s why he’s short!”

Like always, the anger Felix feels is bigger than himself. 

He screams. Rodrigue tries grab Felix by the back of his shirt but just barely misses when Felix flings himself off the bench; he throws a curled fist at Glenn’s shoulder and is met with an aptly timed dodge, Glenn’s cool smirk, and a smug _“Too slow!”_

And it escalates, because it always does; Rodrigue tries to stop them, but within seconds, Felix’s aggression drives Glenn to throw a few light punches back, both boys’ blows brushing against skin but never really landing until Glenn makes the fatal mistake of heaving for breath, leaving an opening that lets Felix lunge forward and sink his teeth on the skin of Glenn’s arm. 

Glenn screeches a word Felix knows neither of them are allowed to say. 

Finally, Felix calms, but Rodrigue grabs him by the arm and shoots a look that _almost_ makes Felix feel guilty.

He then takes Glenn’s arm and inspects the bite mark on his skin— there’s no blood, thankfully, but the non-graveness of the injury isn’t enough to placate their father’s seething indignation. When the panic finally falls from his expression, Rodrigue narrows his eyes at his sons, but while Felix shrinks a little at his father’s stare, Glenn maintains his composure. 

Felix bows his head down. From the corner of his eye he catches Glenn, still inspecting the bite mark on his arm, feeling the grooves of skin beneath his fingers.

Glenn holds his bite mark out. “I think I might have rabies.”

Rodrigue buries his face in his hands.

A deep sigh leaves his throat. “Imagine,” he says, casting a piercing leer over at Glenn’s direction, “if you brought this kind of foolishness to Gautier territory. What do you think would happen?”

Glenn, who has never in his life feared authority, says, “Sylvain’s dad is gonna kill us with the creepy bone lance.”

Felix, who has _once_ in his life feared authority, says, “He’s _not_ gonna kill us with the creepy bone lance.”

“Right,” Glenn smiles at him. “Not us. Just you.”

Rodrigue lets out another sigh. If Felix hadn’t been consumed by the idea of the Lance of Ruin impaling his flesh, he would laugh a little bit at the way his father’s face looked — it was as if the lines of his face were growing longer, the white pigments of his hair spreading rapidly from the roots.

Rodrigue rubs at his temple, very clearly exasperated. “Glenn, leave us be,” Rodrigue orders. “I need to talk to your brother.”

Glenn huffs. That he can stride away with an unaffected smile makes Felix crease his brows in annoyance. Glenn can get away with being _Glenn_ , because Glenn will never care what Felix or Rodrigue say. People’s words, good or bad, roll off him like water off a duck’s back, which meant he could throw as many jabs as he wanted without bleeding on anyone’s retorts. It’s something Felix can’t help but envy about him.

When Glenn is out of earshot, Felix looks up at his father. “He said something worse, you know.”

Rodrigue’s anger, it seems, has mostly disappeared, replaced—or buried— with the usual suffocating pleasantness he always carries himself with. There’s something in his eyes that Felix can’t read, though. A sort of tiredness. A far-offness. A feeling Felix doesn’t have the right words for.

“Will you tell me?” Rodrigue asks.

Felix scowls, shifting his gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to.”

“I understand.” A sigh leaves his throat. “I do wish I could do more for you, though. There isn’t much I can offer if you refuse to tell me.” Rodrigue crouches down to meet Felix’s height. His fingers move to fix the buttons on Felix’s jacket. “For now, all I can ask is you try not to blow your reactions out of proportion.”

The furrow of Felix’s brow deepens. “If you knew what he _really_ said, you would bite him too.”

“Your brother is eleven.” Rodrigue moves to re-fold the cuffs of Felix’s jacket. The too-long sleeves had undone during the fight and unfurled past Felix’s hands, making him feel even smaller. “And that might seem old to you, but eleven-year-olds can be childish too. Why, even King Lambert and I had our fights. When you get older, you’ll look back at these moments and—”

“You’re doing it again.”

Rodrigue blinks. “Doing what?”

“Making excuses for him.”

Rodrigue’s eyes widen. For a fleeting moment, his stare flits to the floor and lingers there, carrying the unnameable, far-off expression, until Rodrigue brings his gaze back to his son. 

He puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Felix,” he says, his voice still gentle. “There are always people out there who will try to hurt you.”

Felix raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“It’s just how life is.” His hands now shift to Felix’s boots. Rodrigue undoes the laces only to re-tie them, tighter this time. They’d never been loose to begin with, but perhaps it's a convenient excuse not to look his son in the eyes. “We cannot control what people do to us. All we can control is how we react.”

With that, Rodrigue rises. Felix cants his head up and frowns. There’s something irksome about the life lessons his father dispels, but at eight, Felix is hardly articulate enough to refute them. His discomfort shows in his face, though, and he makes a point to look up and cast a cross look at his father, who only ruffles Felix’s hair while spreading his lips into a fond smile.

“I know it’s hard,” Rodrigue says. “The Gautiers will be seeing us soon, and all I’m asking is that you put on your best smile for them.”

Felix narrows his eyes. “What if I don’t want to?”

“Just remember that it’s the knightly thing to do.”

And this is hardly the answer Felix wants to hear. He frowns, looking up at his father. “I thought being a knight was about fighting bad people.”

“Knights give people hope,” Rodrigue says, and for once, Felix believes him. “It’s our job to take the bad things we’re feeling and keep it inside, so nobody else has to fuss over us. So we smile. You can do that for me, right?”

Felix bites his lip. It’s tiring when he can tell when his father is wrong, because Felix never has the words to prove it. Silently, he nods. Rodrigue reaches his hand out, and Felix takes it.

**iv.**

The second time Felix dies, he thinks his brother might be ashamed.

Of course, Glenn’s not around to tell him that. Glenn doesn’t care because caring isn’t something dead boys can do.

Or at least that’s what Felix thinks before something hard and dull and heavy slams against the back of his head. The impact shatters bone, a mantle of greyish static clouding his vision as he collapses, the excruciating pain wrenching an ugly scream from his throat — for his father and for his weapon and for _goddess, he can’t see, he can’t see —_ until all he’s left with is a fading ache and the acute awareness of warm blood spilling into the concrete from the back of his fractured skull.

But he wakes up. He sits himself upright, opens his eyes to find himself on the same street he had collapsed in, except it’s emptier, brighter, ground and sky and stuff between all a blinding shade of white. His eyes flutter. Reality remains tilted, distorted, blank. There’s no sign of the professor, his father, or his classmates anywhere. Felix presses two fingers against the left side of his chest, just below his collarbone. There’s still a pulse, at least. 

From somewhere close, Felix hears the familiar patter of riding boots — and the distinctive swagger with which they strode — closing the distance between them. His new companion lowers himself, crouching by his side to offer an open hand, but Felix merely stares, expression betraying disbelief at the face he sees. Short hair, dark as his own. Amber eyes, sharper, warmer. A strange grin, straddling the impossible line between amiable and arrogant.

Still, Felix reaches his own reluctant hand out, and it’s Glenn that grasps it, hauling Felix to his feet, even grabbing him by the shoulders to steady him when Felix nearly stumbles.

Reason says that this should not be possible. There’s an awareness that his mind is strangely accepting — _too_ accepting — of this reality, of how something swallowed his world and spit it out all wonky. He still _feels_ , but that comes out a little wrong, too. It’s muted. Like there’s a sheet between him and his heart and it puts him at a distance from himself, forcing himself to reach for his whatever emotion he believes he’s supposed to feel, instead of letting them consume him, as they usually do, as they have always done.

Glenn tilts his head, studying him. “You grew your hair out,” he says.

Felix touches the back of his head. The blood and fractures are somehow gone, but his bun has come undone. He hooks a finger around his hair tie to pull it out, letting a sheet of loose hair to fall to his back.

He blinks. “Too many people said I looked like you,” he tells Glenn.

Glenn lets out a wry laugh. “And now you’re older than me.”

Something within reminds Felix that this knowledge is supposed to sting. The hurt, however, feels more like thought than emotion, as if the ache indeed existed, but had slipped far beyond his grasp. He says, “I guess so.”

“Are you upset about that?”

“Should I be?”

“Yes,” Glenn says, “because I’m still taller.”

Felix grits his teeth. “Bitch.”

Glenn’s mouth splits into a smug grin. “Good to see you too, Felix.”

Four years. Glenn should be twenty, but he isn’t. Instead, Glenn is sixteen when Felix is seventeen, and he asks Felix to fill him in on the years that he’d lost. Four years. _Four years,_ gone, denied to him, and for what? Felix should be angry. At least, he wants to be. Instead, he’s calm, almost too calm, as if the expanse of his rage is a lake he merely drifts over. The ripples of fury brush against him, but he cannot not dive into it.

Instead, they both sit with their backs against a blinding wall, legs pulled to their knees. When Glenn asks him again, to speak stories of the years he had missed, Felix finds himself talking about things that are easy to talk about, like Ingrid and her marriage proposals, Sylvain’s antics, the professor, their missions, their classes, the sudden chain of strange events at the Officer’s Academy. He doesn’t deign to mention Dimitri, or Miklan, or Rodrigue, or how, if sadness was still possible in this impossible place, he could claim they should be sad about _that_ , about how their father lost both his sons just as they neared the edge of their adolescence. Both times, it was for nothing. 

Felix does not talk about where they are, or what has become of them, but he does want — for as much as he is still capable of wanting — to ask.

“What’s there?” It takes too much of his strength to cling to lucidity. “After this?”

“After this?” Glenn laughs. “Nothing.”

Felix casts his gaze to the sky. Somehow, it slipped his notice their bleached white world had been fading, not to black, but to translucency. If nothingness were a colour it would be seeping all over. There are hints of violet bleeding into the buildings, dark and murky — and for reasons he cannot comprehend, _familiar_.

He turns to Glenn. “You’re not real, are you?”

Glenn shakes his head.

Felix puts a hand to his chest. Two fingers press hard against the muscle blow his collar bone. His heartbeat is gone.

A force knocks him viciously back into his body. Felix blinks. Reality tilts itself upright as his sight clears, wisps of violet dissipating at the corners of his eyes. Still, he feels scattered, dazed, like there had been a gap between this moment and the second that preceded it; one moment he’s cutting down bandits, and the next he’s standing at an empty street corner with his hand loosely gripped around the hilt of his sword, feeling out of tune with his mind, with his body.

There’s a violent stammering against his ribs. He knows, at least, that there is a thought he must hold onto — whether the vague notion is a memory or a dream, he cannot say. He tries to reach for it, but the thought only slips through his fingers. Within seconds, he forgets there was anything to remember at all.

Felix touches the back of his head. Why does he feel so angry all of a sudden? And why does he feel pained even when he isn’t wounded? Armoured boots clank against the concrete as they sprint from behind — _Do I know this moment? Have I been here before?_ — and with a panicked grunt, Felix whips around, parrying a hammer before his assailant can strike at his bones. 

A rider charges at Felix’s attacker, dragging a veil of light from underneath her. The woman in armour screams as the scalding light ascends, allowing Felix to charge straight and shove her weakened body into the concrete with a swing of his blade.

His heart’s in his throat, bounding relentlessly. The world reeks of metal and blood and dirt. When his gaze drifts to the bandit at his feet, his stomach drops, and suddenly everything he feels is larger, more amplified. Fear becomes a deep well inside of him. It takes too much of his strength to keep from falling into its depths.

The man who saved him charges at his side. “Felix,” Rodrigue calls.

“The villagers,” Felix remembers. They’re in Fraldarius territory, and they need to save the villagers. The residue of adrenaline leaves him almost stammering. “Are they safe?”

“Almost,” Rodrigue replies. “Your professor and his highness are taking care of the last of the ruffians.”

It’s very, very hard to breathe.

Felix collapses against a building wall, heaving for breath. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. It’s humiliating, that he can’t stop himself from falling apart in front of his father, but what’s worse is how he can’t pin the blame for this overwhelming agitation on anything rational, anything concrete. When he flutters his eyes open, he’s met with Rodrigue’s concerned gaze — and he hates it. Hates his father’s pity and worse, hates how he much he needs him to act on it, needs Rodrigue to be the father Felix has always denied needing, needs a hand on his shoulder or a word of comfort or two — _are you alright, my son? You’re going to be fine, my son. I’m right here, my son._

Felix opens his mouth, but whatever it was that he wanted to say dies against the violent tremors of his lungs. Without words, he’s stripped bare. No feigned apathy can armour him. Nothing can save him from how small he feels.

Rodrigue stays, at least, until Felix‘s breathing finally slows. He says nothing. He looks like he wants to try. They have never been good at affection, have they? It seems all his father can do is stare, eyes wide with concern, with fear. There’s something in his eyes that Felix cannot describe, some inexpressible look that makes Felix’s heart drop to his stomach.

Felix could have done everything right. Could have stopped the bandits without making such a show of irrational panic. And he achieved the first half. The look in Rodrigue’s eyes is not quite disappointment, but it’s awfully close. There’s no name for what it means. All it is is Felix’s own certainty that no matter what he accomplishes or who he becomes, nothing he does will ever break Rodrigue’s need to search his son’s eyes for a glimpse of somebody else’s ghost. 

When he finally gathers himself, Rodrigue opens his mouth to speak. “You did well, my son,” he says. “Your brother would have been proud.”

**v.**

Felix nearly busts Sylvain’s door down when he arrives.

A yelp of pain rises from his lungs when Felix crashes into him, surprise forcing Sylvain to drop the book he’d been reading. Felix gathers his knees up the bed and scoots to a space beside Sylvain.

Felix rests his chin on his knee, scowling. “Glenn’s a bitch.”

“What did he do this time?” Sylvain asks, snaking a hand out to retrieve his fallen book. “Wait — how old are you again?”

“Eight?” 

Sylvain shakes his head. “You can’t use that word. Try again.”

Felix furrows his brows. “Glenn’s a poophole.”

“Better,” Sylvain says. He throws an arm over Felix’s shoulders. “What did he do this time?”

Felix explodes into a long-winded rant about what happened earlier in the morning, how Glenn said no when Felix asked to borrow his spurs because ‘they wouldn’t fit anyway,’ then got annoyed when Felix got mad and claimed the spurs were going to fit _someday_ and that Glenn was just scared that Felix was going to grow taller than him, something which Glenn said _‘was never going to happen’_ because it turned out that Felix was actually adopted from elf people and Glenn just never told him because Rodrigue made everybody in Fraldarius play into his very elaborate lie about Felix having a crest all so Felix wouldn’t find out about being adopted or feel bad about having been stolen from the elf people, so Felix bit him, which made Glenn really, really annoyed, and then their father got worse, worse annoyed and said that if Glenn and Felix were still fighting by the time they got to Gautier territory, Sylvain’s father was going to kill them with the creepy bone lance.

Sylvain sighs.

“Anyway,” Felix huffs. “That’s why you’re going to tell your father that I’m staying in your house forever.”

“You’re—” His eyes widen. “I’m going to what now?”

Felix crosses his arms. “You heard me,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s good for both of us. I don’t have to see Glenn again, and then I also get to protect you.”

A breath of a laugh leaves Sylvain’s throat. “Protect me? From what?”

And all of a sudden Felix’s face goes very serious. He stares up at Sylvain, narrowing his eyes. 

“Glenn said Miklan pushed you into a well.”

Sylvain blinks. He scratches the back of his skull, lowering his head. “That… that wasn’t a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me! You could have _died!_ ”

“But I didn’t, did I?”

Loose fists curl and Felix snaps, his voice rising. “But you could have! Why’s he still around? He’s like Glenn, but worse. Both of them just keep blaming us for things we can’t control!”

“Wait, what did Glenn say?”

Felix falls silent.

Sylvain grabs his shoulders, nudging Felix to meet his gaze. His brown eyes are wide with concern. “What did Glenn say?”

Felix doesn’t realize it when he starts crying. He just blinks and the tears come pouring out. It’s frustrating, how the emotion devours him so easily. What kind of a knight would he be if he couldn’t even conquer his own feelings? He wants, no — needs to be stronger than this.

But it’s hard. Everything he feels is always bigger than him. Nothing is within his control, not Glenn’s anger, not Miklan’s cruelty, not the pain he feels from both, not Sylvain’s discomforting sympathy. 

Perhaps it’s impossible, but he would eat his own heart if it meant nobody else could bruise it. Maybe then, no emotional wound could keep him from standing on his feet, unshakable, unwavering, like the knight everybody needs him to be.

“He said,” Felix strains. It’s hard to draw words out against the hitching of his breath. “If it weren’t for me, he’d still have a mom.”

“He said that?”

Felix blinks. “Kind of.”

“Felix, that—” Sylvain starts. The mix of surprise and concern seems to give him trouble with assembling what it is he wants to say. “That isn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Felix agrees, with certainty, despite his quivering breath. 

“What?”

“I know it isn’t my fault.” Felix furrows his brows. He draws in a large breath, wiping his cheek with the ball of his palm. “I’m just tired of people wishing somebody else were alive instead of me. What was I supposed to do? I was a baby.” 

To Felix’s surprise, a small laugh leaves Sylvain’s lips. 

Felix shoots him a glare. “What’s so funny?”

Sylvain blinks, pressing his mouth into a line, as if to school the small smile that almost splits across his face. “I don’t know. I just think you’re braver than I am Felix. If that were me, and somebody else had to die for me, I think—” he stops. His expression falls into something sad and wistful. “I think I’d _hate_ myself.”

“Why? You were a _baby_.”

The lopsided grin returns, though this time, Felix can tell it’s forced. “Heh.” Collecting himself, Sylvain adds, “I guess I was.”

Felix narrows his eyes, though it’s less out of disdain and more out of bemusement. “You’re so _weird_.”

He means it, but not in a terrible way. Sylvain _was_ weird. The older they become the harder it gets to decipher him. Felix has known him long enough to distinguish when his smiles are real and when his smiles are forced, but it seems Sylvain has been wearing more of the latter, lately, like it’s a mask and there’s something inside that he wants to hide from everyone and Felix doesn’t know what or _why_.

Because Sylvain is _good_ . There’s no reason for him to hide that. There’s no reason for anybody to think otherwise. Felix’s thoughts drift to the image of his friend crying at the bottom of a well, and winces at the sting of a memory that doesn’t belong to him. It hurt that people tried to beat the good out of good people. Felix doesn’t want to lose _his_ Sylvain, the Sylvain whose smiles are so big and real that they can melt every ugly feeling away. 

“Did letting that out make you feel better?” Sylvain asks.

Felix’s gaze flits up at him. He realizes his cheeks are already dry. The bad still feels bad, but it’s smaller around Sylvain’s presence. 

Yet, a sense of stubbornness keeps him from admitting the truth. Meeting Sylvain’s eyes, Felix frowns, exaggerating the furrow of his brows.

“Oh, come on,” Sylvain scoffs. “Tell me I helped you feel better!”

Some truths feel bigger than others. This one feels too overwhelming to admit. The enormity of it makes Felix go red at the ears, forcing him to bow his head down in mild embarrassment. Still, he refuses to give in, especially when the redness elicits a smirk from Sylvain’s lips.

“I bet,” Sylvain starts, his tone distinctively teasing, “in _five_ seconds you’re going to start smiling again.”

Felix huffs, folding his arms over his chest. “I won’t.”

Sylvain’s lip curls into a smirk. “Let’s see about that.”

 _Five_ , Sylvain mouths, raising his fingers up. There’s nothing particularly funny about what Sylvain is saying, yet still, the corners of Felix’s lips lift without command when Sylvain meets his gaze with a gleam of mischief in his eyes, head tilting as a lopsided grin splits across his face. His thumb folds into his palm. _Four_. 

Felix tears his gaze away and wills himself to frown, biting his lip down in some stubborn refusal to let Sylvain have the satisfaction of being right. It’s not easy, though, especially not with how he catches a glimpse of the other’s cocky grin without lifting his gaze, how he can feel the cheeky glint in Sylvain’s eyes without even looking.

 _Three. Two. On—_ “Hey, ow! Felix!”

Felix grabs Sylvain by his lapels and plants his face into his chest with just about enough force to earn a pained grunt. The smile Felix failed to restrain is pressed against the fabric of Sylvain’s shirt when they both finally laugh. 

“I won that one,” Sylvain gloats.

“You,” Felix whines, muffled behind Sylvain’s shirt and his own stifled laughter. “Are. The. Wooooorst.”

“Yeah, but you love me, right?”

Felix pulls away. He crosses his arms and sticks his tongue out. It makes a sound that goes _tpwththth_.

The room goes quiet. Sylvain smiles and picks his book back up, flipping it open as he throws an arm around Felix’s shoulder. He doesn’t ask if Felix would like to be read to, just trails on softly from where he last stopped, tracing the lines of print with his index finger. Felix rests his head on Sylvain’s chest, feeling soft cotton against his cheek. He would call Sylvain a better brother than Glenn, but Glenn isn’t that bad a brother, really, and something about Sylvain seeing Felix as a little brother stings in a way Felix has yet to understand. 

“Let me stay here,” he says, cutting Sylvain off before he can read the last line of the page. “I don’t want to not be around the next time Miklan tries to hurt you. If you died, I’d be really upset.”

Sylvain’s voice grows very quiet. He offers Felix a warm smile. “Then I won’t die.”

“That’s dumb,” Felix chides. “Everybody dies.”

“Then I’ll try not to die until you die.”

Felix’s heart stutters and he’s not so sure what that means. 

Blinking, he says, “It won’t be fair to me if you get to live longer.”

“But you said,” Sylvain retorts, sounding almost amused, “that you’d be sad if _you_ got to live longer.”

“Together, then,” Felix says. “We’ll die together.”

Sylvain laughs. “How will that even work?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Alright,” Sylvain says, returning to his book. 

Felix scoots over in front of Sylvain and palms his book down, forcing the other to look at him. Eyes almost pleading, holds a pinky out. “Promise?”

Sylvain holds his gaze. There’s something about his eyes that say he’s a little surprised, if not bemused, as if he hadn’t processed how serious Felix was about his request. Felix’s heart falls; for a fleeting moment, he thinks Sylvain might laugh at him again, dismiss his sentiments as something puerile or foolish or not worth taking seriously. But instead, Sylvain smiles, small and amiable, and extends his own pinky, curling it around Felix’s finger.

“No dying on each other,” he says, warm, honest. “That’s a promise.”

Felix smiles, satisfied. Within minutes, he’s rubbing at his eyes, exhausted from their talk and the day’s journey. It’s getting very dark, and if he doesn’t want his father scolding him for keeping Sylvain up, he should probably head back to the guest chambers where he and Glenn are supposed to sleep for the night.

Instead, he drifts away on Sylvain’s chest, turning old words over in his mind. _Yeah, but you love me, right?_ There’s something very scary about using very big words, even in light conversations. All he knows is that he wants Sylvain to stick to his promise. He imagines a life where they grow very old, so old that Felix can make fun of Sylvain for having a shiny forehead when he inevitably loses all his hair like his father did, and Sylvain can pretend to make fun of Felix for growing very tiny mustaches like Rodrigue does. It’s not so bad a life, Felix thinks.

Sylvain rests his hand on the back of Felix’s neck, splays his fingers out so that his palm brushes against his hair and his thumb touches the curve of his ear. “Don’t let what Glenn said get to you,” he says, not looking away from his book. “If it counts for anything, _I_ like that you’re alive.”

**vi.**

Felix dies. He dies at the front lines of Garreg Mach, arrows sinking into his flesh as he cuts through the volley of snipers taking aim on Ingrid. He dies charging in front of an rage-crazed Dimitri at Ailell, his bloodied body forced to the scalding ground when he tries to parry a blow Lord Gwendal meant for the boar prince. He dies to soldiers. He dies to bandits. He dies to thieves. He dies trying to slash a monster’s throat before it can breathe poison gas on an injured Annette, only for sharp incisors to sink into Felix’s torso when the beast’s jaws snap shut around him.

He dies, and never remembers. Every violent scene dissolves into hot air before he can tether the strings of memory permanently to his mind. What he’s left with instead are faint echoes, flickers of macabre visions that drift between thoughts when he leaves his mind idle, glimpses of scenes too defined to be imaginary, yet too grotesque to be real.

Mostly, there persists an urge to be better. To train harder. He works himself past his limits, hacks at the training dummies, spars with the professor when he can. There’s no room for failure when this much is at stake. Perhaps if he dies in this war, the world will appropriate his demise, rewrite his fall as the conclusion to another tale of knightly devotion, assuring that every child who hears his story will dream of cutting the span of their lives in half, then have their grotesque ambitions be lauded as patriotism. Or perhaps, when he dies, the world will forget him. 

He tells himself none of this matters. The _present_ is what matters. He needs to protect everyone. Somebody has to.

That they all live to see the end of every battle is a miracle. At Myrrdin, Dedue returns to them, swooping down from the sky on the same wyvern he had struggled to tame in their academy days, and though too many scars mar the man’s dark skin, the fact that Dedue is alive at all makes Felix suspect that something bigger than themselves might be watching over, taking care of them. Faith took a backseat when Felix decided his devotion belonged to strength, but sometimes, when his thoughts drift to bright green hair and the pair of blank eyes they frame, his mind assigns divinity a new face.

Still, they have to be careful. War is war. They cannot afford to stake their lives on unknowable divinities. At the great bridge, Dedue and Sylvain lead their soldiers on an assault on the imperial beasts, carving a path north that lets Dimitri charge straight to the army commanders. Annette holds the fortress with Mercedes, with both expending what’s left of their magic alternating between healing wounds and striking down reinforcements. The rest of them lead their respective battalions in a vicious onslaught against Alliance reinforcements, leaving Felix to trail Dimitri’s shadow, both to keep a close watch on the boar prince’s erratic behavior, and to strike down every soldier Dimitri bypasses in his single-minded crusade against Adrestia’s generals.

He’s too busy making sure Dimitri doesn’t get himself killed that he reacts a second too late when a general’s horse bolts at him with breakneck speed. He only has a split second to process how familiar the general looks — flowing red hair framing a fierce, determined expression — before a spear flies at him.

From nowhere, Sylvain springs down from his saddle and lobs a blast of fire mid leap — the shot misses, but the flames have the general choking on smoke, his horse darting backward in a frenzied panic. Boots sliding against the concrete when he lands, Sylvain bends his knees in a defensive stance and parries a spear the general had hurled at Felix’s path. 

“Got your back,” Sylvain says, easy and cocksure as ever. Still on the defensive, he trains his gaze on the general, blocking his jabs with swift sweeps of his lance. Breaking focus for a fleeting second, Felix actually laughs, impressed and proud that Sylvain’s pulling his weight — it’s easy to forget how reliable he actually is most of the time.

The distraction gives Felix enough time to charge a thoron spell. Inhaling, he raises a hand to the sky, fingers splayed, gathering a surge of energy into a now-closing fist. Feeling his pulse thrum to the coursing whir of electricity, he holds the magic steady in his hand, except before he can cast the bolt, he makes the mistake of glancing up at Sylvain, who catches his gaze — as he always does — then spreads his lips into a proud smile. Felix doesn’t have the time to tell Sylvain he’s left his defenses open, because in that fleeting moment of idiotic carelessness, the general drives a spear straight into Sylvain’s abdomen.

Felix screams. 

His hand drops. The air cracks with the eruption of static. Raw panic descends from the sky as one devastating surge of lightning that cuts into the general’s heart, sending him tumbling from his saddle and slumping lifelessly into the ground.

Unthinking, Felix sprints to where Sylvain collapsed. He drops to his knees on the bloodied concrete and wraps a careful arm around Sylvain’s shoulders, pulling him close, letting his head fall to his lap. Felix’s voice trembles. “Sylvain?”

Sylvain blinks in response. He’s alive, thank the goddess. He’s deathly pale, breathing shallow breaths. One hand rests above the gaping new wound, the other expends the little that’s left of his energy to curl a loose grip around the Lance of Ruin. Even barely conscious, Sylvain has the nerve to smile. _I’m not afraid,_ he says. He can barely raise his voice to a whisper. _I figured it would end like this._

Quiet rage stabs at his chest. He’s not so sure who it’s for, really — the dead commander, Sylvain’s resignation, or his own helplessness. Felix has never known how to beg, too stubborn to acknowledge his own needs, his wants, unless he could provide for them himself. There’s a cry that won’t leave his throat, a flood of pride barring any display of vulnerability from drifting to the surface, even now. _Please_ . Thinking the word is the most he can manage. _Please don’t leave me._

A flicker of memory cuts through the haze of panicked thoughts. Somehow, this scene feels familiar. As if their roles had been reversed once. Except, if it had been Sylvain kneeling in the dirt holding Felix to his chest, Sylvain would know what to say. Instead Felix is silent, rendered — by pride or panic — unable to speak, and a pair of brown eyes ( _kinder, rounder than that first death — how do I remember?_ ) stare up at him, offering comfort when Felix cannot. Sylvain lifts his hand from his wound to cup Felix’s cheek. They remain tangled in one another for what feels like several eternities, until the hand on Felix’s face goes limp, smearing red on his cheek as it slips to the floor with a thud. 

A breath hitches in his throat. Felix does not cry.

A tall shadow looms over their bodies. Felix lifts his gaze to meet a familiar blank stare. Words, barbed by grief and anger, rest at the tip of his tongue, but before any sound can escape his throat, the fabric of time comes undone, the carnage of Myrrdin dissolving in a dark, violet haze.

**vii.**

His father is gone.

Perhaps divinity failed them, just this once. Or perhaps Felix is an idiot for believing divinity would protect them at all. Whatever. Wasn’t this what the old man wanted, anyway? Downstairs, his classmates are celebrating, sighing their relief at the return of their prince. The boar prince’s beastly mask falls off, and Dimitri is himself again, or at least, the closest to himself he could possibly be. They have Rodrigue’s idiocy thank for that.

Sylvain emerges from the staircase, drifting to fill the empty space beside Felix. The fabric of his sleeve brushes against Felix’s shoulder when he shifts his arms and folds his hands together over the ledge. They do not speak, do not look at one another, letting the silence settle as they stare at the expanse of Garreg Mach around them. 

The sky is painted a vulgar shade of blue. It rolls above them, cloudless and bright, a kind of joyful daylight that northern Faerghus only witnessed in their short summers. The monastery climate had been a stark change from what they were used to — if Fraldarius was bleak, Gautier was bleaker, further up north and far more unkind, shrouded by darkness and embraced by the cold winds swooping relentlessly from the deserts at their borders. It seemed impossible that any warmth could grow in such a place. 

Yet, the voice beside him speaks, careful and quiet, dripping with the kind of sincerity Sylvain denies everyone he meets — everyone but Felix. “You good?”

“Great,” Felix deadpans.

“If you need anything —”

“You’re here,” Felix says. “I know.”

Something like a laugh leaves Sylvain’s throat. “You know, you don’t need to put such a tough act all the time. It’s okay to be sad.”

Sylvain’s words bring Felix’s walls higher up around him. Despite himself, Felix manages at least half a truth. “It’s more shock than sadness, I guess.”

What he means is that it's hard to feel any emotion that isn’t rage. Perhaps there’s some sadness there, but it’s a deep pit at the bottom of himself that he refuses to fall into. He’d rather be angry. Anger is familiar and the familiar is always far less terrifying.

Sylvain drapes his wrists over the ledge. “Sometimes I feel like it’s to me happened before.”

“What has?” Felix asks.

Felix has memorized Sylvain’s expressions by know; he knows by the way Sylvain bites his lip that there is a truth at the tip of his tongue that he is too afraid to let slip. There’s an attempt to feign another grin, though all Sylvain can seem to manage is a small smile. It fades too soon.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve died before.” Sylvain looks down. 

Felix raises an eyebrow. He gaze to Sylvain for a fleeting moment, then casts a glance at the hand gripping the ledge. There persists an urge to circle his wrist with his fingers, but he wills himself to ignore it. 

“Sometimes, it’s for you,” Sylvain adds. “Like a knight out of a storybook. You’re cornered, with no way to run, and — bam! Right in the nick of time, I swoop in to save you. But—”

Echoes of something that feels like a memory flicker between thoughts: Felix, frozen. Sylvain’s lance, yanked out his flesh. A river of blood streaming out of his torso. Sylvain, calling his name. 

Felix frowns. “When this war if over, I hope this country learns to stop writing such shitty storybooks.”

“Cynical as ever, are we?” Sylvain laughs, but it’s almost too mirthless. From the corner of his eye, Felix watches Sylvain shift his gaze to the sinking cliffs. His eyes linger there. Perhaps it's why his voice goes very quiet. “Dreams like this, they just — they put into perspective how _lucky_ we've been these past six years.”

“We worked hard,” Felix says simply.

“ _You_ did,” Sylvain counters. “I’ve been coasting by. It’s a miracle I’m still here, really.”

Another not-memory. Bloodied stone. Sylvain, limp on the concrete. Felix, saying his name. Wrapping arms around his broken body. Felix’s heart, stammering violently. Sylvain’s heart, soundless. 

_You came back._

Something like rage stabs at his chest. “If you don’t want to stake your life on miracles,” Felix says, “maybe you should take your training more seriously.”

Sylvain exhales. “Maybe. But there’s still so much we can’t control.” He pauses, as if considering his words. Felix hears him take a deep breath. “Do you remember when I said I wouldn’t try to get killed before you?”

 _You came back. Why didn’t_ he _?_

“I remember.”

“Sometimes,” Sylvain says, “I’m not sure if I’m strong enough keep it.”

Felix shifts away to lay an elbow on the balcony ledge, resting his chin on the ball of his palm. He feels strangely calm, despite Sylvain’s words. Perhaps the sudden stack of shock after shock made him numb to surprises. “Did you know that when you die—” His voice is flat, but every word drips with quiet scorn. “—you shit yourself? Every muscle in the body relaxes, so whatever you’d been holding inside just comes leaking out. Everybody’s heroes died smelling like shit.”

He almost hears Glenn in himself. How the crassest of barbs could leave his mouth without so much as breaking the vacancy of his voice. A younger Felix would’ve been proud to have mastered that kind of composure, but right now, it’s unnerving more than anything. 

“Okay, that’s disgusting.” Sylvain laughs — a nervous sound. “Is that the speech you give Ingrid? Come on, Felix. It’s not that I want to die. I don’t care about being a hero or a martyr. It’s just—” He draws in bated breath. “There are things out there that are bigger than us. Bigger than me.”

Now it’s Felix’s turn to laugh. He should have seen this coming. It’s exactly like Sylvain to back out of his own promises. The worst thing is: it’s a habit born of selfishness. Sylvain has never cared for the men and women he would shower with empty vows; they’re the very people he reserves his cruelty for. And yet, the one time Sylvain plans to break a commitment out of compassion rather than flightiness, the person he must leave in the dust is _Felix_. Nothing new, right?

“I want to live to see his highness take our country back,” Sylvain adds. “I really do. But we can’t always control what happens in war. If dying is what it takes to make the best possible future happen—”

Felix spreads his lips into a wry smile. “Is this your way of trying to get out of training?” His tone rises. It’s not something he means to do. “Because it really sounds like you’re giving up.”

Sylvain sighs. 

Felix frowns and casts a sidelong glance at his direction — at how Sylvain slings his upper body over the railing, face falling, so serious and pensive and so unlike Sylvain. There persists a need to hurl a cold insult, but the urge is quick to die, all rage falling silent when his gaze trails dangerously down the curve of Sylvain’s mouth. Felix winces. It’s a jagged thing inside of him. It makes a catastrophe of his chest, a storm of a heartbeat thrashing about against his ribs. 

Their eyes meet. Felix tears his gaze away abruptly, willing a frown upon his face. Still, he feels Sylvain looking at him, studying him, if anything else — curious and without judgment. A gloved hand drifts to touch his neck. Felix flinches, forcing his eyes shut as he lowers his head, cheeks flushing red, desperate to get away from his touch while at the same time wanting more of it, flustered and angry and ashamed of his erratic pulse, of the sheer enormity of his longing.

It’s not fair that Sylvain gets to do this without coming undone. The proximity alone shatters barbed walls, leaving Felix helpless to dam the stream of shameful thoughts that flood his subconscious without permission. He feels vulnerable, stripped bare, gripped by the fear that anyone who looked into his eyes would find every unwanted desire bared in his gaze — small wishes, tender longings: That the hand on his neck, would trail down the small of his back or lower. That it would catch him, hold reluctant body against heaving chest. That the other’s mouth would linger perilously close to his ear — breath hot against his skin — and drag itself along the curve of his jaw, until soft lips press into the corners of a falling-open mouth, closing the distance between them. 

None of it happens. Sylvain lifts his hand from Felix’s neck and lets it fall to his side. There’s a glimmer of sadness in his eyes, and — perhaps this was wishful thinking — a glint of longing. Felix returns his gaze with an icy leer, because it’s the only way he can look at him without feeling exposed. _You know exactly what you do to me,_ Felix accuses him. _You always have._

Sylvain reaches for his shoulder, but his hand only makes a quarter of the distance before he draws it back, crossing his arms instead. “I don’t want to die before you. I’m trying my best not to. But if it happens — Felix, please.” His voice trembles. “Please don’t hate me.

Felix tears his gaze away. “I can’t hate a corpse.”

**viii.**

Dimitri’s too shaken to tell them how Glenn died. There’s no body to bury, and thus no wounds to examine, no evidence of destruction other the contents of the crate delivered at the castle doorstep: a clutter of metal scraps, dented, burned, scratched. What remained of his armour.

Life, still, feels perfectly normal. Felix is waiting for someone to tell him it’s all an elaborate joke. That tomorrow, he will wake up to Glenn knocking on their door to announce his return, howling for a nearby servant to prepare him some tea — with honey, because Felix hates sweets and Glenn hates sharing — before slinging his weary body over the couch, snapping when Felix nudges him awake to ask how the mission went, shooing his younger brother with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Today, not a body comes home. Felix lowers himself to examine the armour more closely. He reaches for the bottom of the crate and unfastens a black spur from what seems to be the remains of a soil-stained riding boot. When the item falls from his grasp, Felix scoops it back up, curls his fingers around the dented arch with little care for the soot and rust dirtying his skin.

A heavy hand slides over his shoulder. Felix lifts his head to meet his father’s face and is surprised at the expression he finds. The kindness in his eyes is not gone, and his lips are pulled into a solemn smile. His voice is very quiet. “How are you feeling, my son?” 

“Fine,” Felix says.

Rodrigue nods. “Good,” he says. “That’s what your brother would have wanted. After what he did for our prince, we owe it to him to be proud. He died like a true knight.”

Felix blinks. A protest forms at his throat, but it’s all feeling and no thought, nothing he can properly make sense of. He opens his mouth to say something, and no words come out.

Rodrigue shakes his head. “There’s nothing left to do but move forward.”

He’s waiting for someone to tell him it’s all a bad dream. Felix rises from his sheets the next day only to for his half-lidded eyes to linger on the empty bed at the other side of the room. At breakfast, nobody steals the food off his plate. When he takes too long washing himself at the bathhouse, nobody’s there to slam angry fists at the door and yell for him to hurry up. Nobody scolds him when he pulls one of father’s costlier swords off the wall of the armoury, and when Felix drags the blade to the training grounds, both hands clenched around the hilt and charged with the desperate urge to swing, no opponent stands at his opposite. 

To have no one disrupt his routine somewhat unsettling, but perhaps it isn’t all that strange. After all, his brother has been a knight for almost a year now. Glenn used to leave for missions for weeks at a time, leaving his younger brother to savor the temporary tranquility of being an only child. All that’s left now is for Glenn to march back into the castle, fill the halls with his overbearing presence, and wrestle the short-lived peace out of Felix’s life.

But days later Rodrigue takes Felix to Fhirdiad, where the newly appointed regent holds the state funeral for the fallen king and his martyred soldiers. It’s well attended; over half the kingdom’s nobles marched from their territories to pay their respects. At the opposite end of the crowd, Felix spots Count Galatea, whose hand is rested firmly on his daughter’s shoulder. Ingrid catches his gaze, offers a smile when Felix gets close enough, though Felix fails to return it. She’s unusually composed for someone of her situation, though Felix could likely say the same of himself.

Instead, it’s Count Galatea that sheds tears. Glenn was their family’s their safety net, their saving grace from poverty. His absence means that nothing can stop their land from plummeting deeper into desolation. 

Felix then casts a glance over to where his best friend sits. Dimitri sinks into a throne that’s a little too big for a thirteen-year-old boy. Ever devoted to his royal obligations, he does his damndest to pull his face to a calm expression, though anyone who knew him well enough would see the gleams of sadness flickering through the cracks. Felix’s legs quiver with the need to push past the crowds and reach for him, but a steady hand holds him by the shoulder. It isn’t the right time, Rodrigue tells him. 

His father guides him to the dais, where Felix is to stand by his side while Rodrigue delivers a speech for the people of Faerghus. A eulogy, of sorts, but also a message of hope. _We are here,_ Rodrigue begins _, to honor the knights who gave their lives in the service of their prince._

And Felix trails off. He feels very far away from himself, as if a blade had cut the strings that kept him tethered to reality. The rest of Rodrigue’s words fade out as every bad thought bleeds into the present, assembling a distorted vision of what Duscur might have looked like: fallen carriages, soldiers scrambling away from the carnage, piles of mangled bodies littering the roadsides, metal clanging against metal, metal sinking onto flesh. 

_Let this not be a sad affair,_ Rodrigue continues. _These men and women have painted the picture of true chivalry. We must let see extent of their devotion as an example for us all. In the face of danger, our knights did not run. They died proud and unafraid._

A woman in the crowd lets out a piercing wail. It’s hard to tell who she lost by just looking at her; she looks old enough that it could’ve been anybody: a parent, a sibling, a lover, a friend. Only after her scream dies into a quiet sob does Rodrigue continue his spiel.

_Let their sacrifices not be in vain. For their honor, our nation must carry on._

Rodrigue folds his hand into a fist, raising it before the crowd. “For Faerghus,” he says, “we will _fight_.”

The crowd follows. “For Faerghus, we will fight!”

“For Faerghus,” he continues, “we will _die!_ ”

“For Faerghus, we will die! _”_

At thirteen, Felix decides that he loves the people of Faerghus. Except now, it feels a lot like hate. His stomach twists into a furious knot when the crowd chants, their chorus of horrific litanies drowning out his thoughts — they speak so easily of death, like it’s good, like it’s always supposed to mean something, like having a sixteen-year-old brother that hasn’t come home in a week is something to be proud of. 

Still, Felix raises his fist with the rest of them. He makes his mouth work, but his words falter, voice growing hollower and hollower by the time the funeral ends.

The crowds disperse quietly after the ceremony. Most of the kingdom nobles return to their territories. Rodrigue, Margrave Gautier, Count Rowe, and their knights remain, perhaps to discuss what will become of the nation. Rodrigue invites him to the meeting, but Felix declines; there’s too much politics involved that he doesn’t understand — that’s Glenn’s job, not his. 

What matters is that he remains in Fhirdiad for a night, which gives him an opportunity to speak with Dimitri, maybe offer a shoulder for comfort. Except, the more he turns the idea in his mind, the less it makes sense — what would he say? What does he even know of this kind of pain? He should ask Glenn. Cold and unfeeling as he may seem, Glenn’s better at that sort of shit.

Instead, he searches for someone else. Felix isn’t surprised when he finds Sylvain by the lower guest rooms, chatting up one of the nobles’ daughters. His hands are thrown up behind his head, posture open and inviting. Since they were children, Sylvain has always had this natural magnetism, but not until the past few years had he learned to hone it to his advantage, drawing people in with a carefully crafted facade of easiness. The girl is falling for it, leaning closer to him with curious, hungry eyes.

Felix knows this is just a shitty new hobby of his — gratifying human needs while indulging this hateful side of himself that simmers with a sadistic lust for tearing people apart. In a week or two, Sylvain will abandon the girl, leave her to her tears, and silently celebrate the fruits of his own cruelty.

Felix doesn’t care, not really, or at least that’s what he tells himself when he catches Sylvain smiling at her — Felix knows this gesture: the lazy tilt of his head, the cheeky glint in his eyes, the small smirk that spreads into something crooked and impossibly infectious. It’s a knife of a grin aimed for somebody else’s heart, yet a sharp sting sends Felix wincing — perhaps from a wound he will later deny exists.

“Sylvain,” he commands. The authority in his voice seems to catch Sylvain off guard, because within seconds, all easy charm falls from his features, widening eyes darting away to meet Felix’s intent stare. 

Sylvain’s eyes are wide with concern. “Felix.”

“Spar with me,” he orders. Before Sylvain can respond, Felix turns on his heel and marches away.

Felix sure as shit hates the pitiful glances people have been giving him lately, but he can admit it’s only thanks to their discomforting sympathy that he can pretty much have his way without a fight. He doesn’t have to look back to know that Sylvain will follow him. From the far end of the hallway, he catches a muffled _I have to go_ , a girl’s protest, and the sound of swift footfalls sprinting to close the distance between them.

They follow the path to Dimitri’s private training grounds without speaking. The guards allow them inside, having long been informed of their respective inheritances: the future Margrave Gautier and the second son of — _no, only son_ — the future _Duke_ , because that’s what Glenn was supposed to be, and Glenn is — 

Felix collects their weapons from the armourer. He tosses a training lance at Sylvain’s direction and watches with scrutiny as his friend fumbles to catch it. This is usually the part where they speak, offering one another good luck wishes after a friendly exchange of banter. There’s none of that today. Felix merely casts a disparaging gaze at his opponent, seething with impatience as he grips the hilt of his sword and waits for the other to take position. 

Felix strikes first. He always does. Sylvain’s hardly as nimble as Glenn and only half as strong as Dimitri, but on an average day he knows how to take a hit, parrying when he isn’t light enough to dodge. Today, Sylvain’s defenses are wide open and he looks barely focused, reacting seconds too late when Felix charges and lands a hard blow at his side. He lets out a pained cry. _Pathetic_.

Sylvain knits his brows. A bead of sweat spills from his temple. _Already?_ He throws all his energy into a lunge that Felix easily sidesteps — with a quick leap, he dives for the opening Sylvain leaves, dull weapon swinging hard against flesh.

The impact sends Sylvain wincing. They go on like this for a while — Sylvain, heaving for breath with every hit he takes; Felix, striking harder as disappointment and frustration overtake him. So much potential wasted, and for what? Violence is the mother tongue of a bleeding nation. All sons of Faerghus know what they are supposed to become: blades and shields for a kingdom that has never known — and will never know — peace. If Sylvain can’t keep up now, then what more on the battlefield?

Eventually Sylvain relents, lowering his lance as he bends his knees, gasping for air. He looks like he’s about to collapse. Begrudgingly, Felix lets Sylvain collect himself. Narrowed eyes sweep their judging gaze over his opponent, only to widen at the sight they catch: Sylvain, breathless, panting, but still looking at Felix, expression betraying deep concern.

Felix knows that look. It’s the look Sylvain offers Felix when a fight with Dimitri goes particularly sour, or when Glenn throws a verbal jab that strikes all the wrong nerves. It’s one of the only times Sylvain’s eyes are ever honest. The realization sends a surge of rage across Felix’s veins. He isn’t sure what’s worse: that Sylvain seems resigned to his defeat, or that even when Felix has shoved this him far down the losing end of a fight, Sylvain has the nerve to feel _sorry_ for him.

A flood of anger sweeps over his whole body. With one hard swing, the dull edge collides with Sylvains chest. A pained gasp escapes Sylvain’s lungs as he loses his footing, staggering backwards until he stumbles headlong into the floor.

Felix groans, irritated. “You can do better than that.”

“I—“ Sylvain tries to say. He throws both hands up, panting. “I yield.”

“What?” Felix narrows his eyes, remorseless. “Get up.”

“I said I yield.” Sylvain forces his eyes shut, gripping the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Felix, I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can.” Quiet fury simmers inside him. “Get up.” 

“Hey, don’t push me past my limit—“

“Fucking hell, it’s like you _want_ to die!”

Felix exhales, tosses the sword to the ground, sending the dull edge skittering across the concrete. 

All fury at last slips away from him, pulling him out of the comfortable realm of anger until he’s left suffocating in some disquieting flurry of feeling. His legs give in from underneath. 

Mouth quivering, Felix shuts his eyes. Small, unwanted dew drops form at the corners. As he lowers his head, more tears appear, streaming down his cheeks and wetting the concrete with small, clear specks. One balled fist curls tighter around the fabric of his trousers, as he realizes, with confusion and disdain, that he’s not cried once since learning of Glenn’s fate.

A soft voice calls his name. “Felix.”

Felix brings a knee to his chest and unfastens the single spur latched to his boot. Both hands grip either side of the arch, feeling the chipped gilt and dents beneath his fingers. This doesn’t belong to him. Glenn earned this, at his ceremony, when he signed himself to the service of their nation. It should feel wrong for Felix to have kept something so sacred on his person. But perhaps there’s no point to his guilt. The spur doesn’t really belong to anyone now. Not anymore.

“My brother,” Felix says, as if processing the gravity of his words for the first time, “is gone.”

It’s painful to look at Sylvain, whose expression is contorted in a fusion of apprehension and concern. Felix has never been good at asking for help. Sylvain has always been good at offering it. Useless guilt floods Felix’s thoughts once more, punishing him for wanting comfort. But Sylvain wraps his bruised arms around Felix, and pulls him close to his chest. Despite himself, Felix buries his face into the crook of his neck.

Faerghus claims that dying for another is the single greatest act of love one could commit. Begging the living to never leave you behind — it’s as blasphemous as it is selfish. It’s foolish, too. What a risk it is to stake so much of yourself on the words of some child who has grown to vindicate his grievances by breaking promises — a boy who has mastered the art of building hope only to cruelly tear it down. Yet, against his own self-scrutiny, Felix finds his fingers clutching the fabric of Sylvain’s shirt, forehead bowed against the shallow heaving of Sylvain’s chest. An unspeakable plea creates a knot in his throat, threatening to dredge from his lungs some strangled cry that Felix instead exhales as a single staccato breath, all fear withheld.

Sylvain tucks a strand of hair behind Felix’s ear. The simple brush of skin dismantles his defenses entirely.

“I’m not going to die on you,” Sylvain says. His voice drips with uncharacteristic sincerity. “I promised you that.”

Felix breaks into a sob against Sylvain’s chest.

What a barbed person he was. What a mess of denial and self-contradiction. Grief constructs a new wall of antagonism around him, one Felix isn’t certain he’ll ever learn how to tear down. Still, as one hand cradles the back of his head when the last stream of tears spill into the hem of another’s shirt, a new realization sweeps over him: it’s as frightening as it is relieving, that he has somebody in his life that understands him perfectly.

**ix.**

Somebody taps the back of his shoulder. “Felix,” they say. “This is yours, right?”

A barbed jab dies in his throat within the same second that it forms - Felix doesn’t like being touched, but seeing the familiar item in the professor’s hands kills whatever annoyance he might have felt. 

“That’s mine.” He plucks the spur from their hands. “Thank you for finding it.

The professor manages a hint of a smile. “The pleasure is mine.”

Felix runs his fingers over the chips and rust. He lets his gaze linger on the spur, only to stop when he feels somebody else’s blank stare lingering on _him_. 

In a very unnerving way, the professor reminds him of Glenn. When they spoke, there always seemed to be a detached air about them. Except, Glenn could care if he wanted to. Perhaps, the professor could care, too, but there was something off about it when they tried — when they reached out, it felt less like real caring and more like the performance of caring. It was too contrived, too calculated.

“You look like you have something to say to me,” they say.

Felix scratches the back of his head. “I might.”

“Care to talk about it over tea?”

“I —” he says, turning the idea over in his mind. “Alright.

Felix’s dorm room is mostly bare. He didn’t bring much with him when the campaign began, and he carries less now that the war is over. For a minute, he considers placing the spur in the satchel that carries the rest of his few belongings, but he soon considers that there’s little point in bringing the thing home when it doesn’t really belong to anyone. And that makes him remember that there’s little point in going home, anyway, because where’s that, anymore? Who’s waiting for him?

The tea helps keep his mind off of it. So does the conversation. Silent as the professor may seem, they’re actually a pretty good conversationalist when they find the right topic. Felix stays mostly quiet when they speak, letting the monotony of the professor’s voice drown out the flurry of questions his mind throws.

The professor mentions the opera. Felix smiles. It’s not something he can help. He doesn’t tell them Annette’s voice helps him sleep at night. He doesn’t tell them he only visits the cathedral when he’s certain Dorothea will be at choir practice. There’s a ballad Sylvain knows and no longer sings, because it’s never worked on women, but if Felix had more courage and less pride, he would ask to hear that soft baritone again, then find a way to pretend he wasn’t in love with the melody.

Felix doesn’t tell the professor he wishes he could sing. Or, that wishes he could hold every ugly emotion in his throat instead of his fists. Violence is his body’s first language. He hasn’t learned how to rid of inner ugliness without turning their jagged edges outward, so much that anybody who reaches for his hand is damned to cut themselves on the barbs. How did people do it? How does one let a feeling leave their body without hurting anybody with it?

Felix turns Glenn’s spur over. What’s he supposed to do with a feeling he cannot name?

He furrows his brows. It’s hard to look the professor in the eyes. “I wanted to ask about what happened in the sealed forest,” he says. “When you came back. Your hair changed, but I know that isn’t it.”

The professor tucks a strand of bright green hair behind their ear, their blank stare unshifting as they linger on Felix’s eyes. “How much do you want to know?”

Felix looks down. “All of it, I guess.”

A faint smile forms on the professor’s lips. “I guess there isn’t a reason for me to hide this from you anymore.”

What the professor then explains is something Felix feels he already knows. How they could tear a moment from reality and patch a new one its place. Mistakes erased, deaths undone, fixed under the whims of divinity. Felix’s thoughts wander to the fields of Duscur. If such a power existed, then, perhaps he needn’t lose a brother, nor a best friend. His mind drifts, then, to their losses in Gronder. 

Something doesn’t feel right.

His gut twists into a knot. Felix places his fingers on his stomach. There was a wound here once, wasn’t there? 

“How many times have I —“ The unspoken word hangs as a lump in his throat. “How many times have you changed things for me?”

The professor pauses. They take a moment to sip their tea before speaking, bringing the cup to their lips in a slow, robotic motion. “There are times you take lives that I believe deserve to be spared.” Ceramic clinks against wood as delicate fingers slide the teacup back on the table surface. “You remember Gronder, do you not?”

Of course he remembers Gronder. None of his former classmates died by his sword, but the professor’s words have him imagine stolen realities. Could he have killed Lysithea, then? Bernadetta? Ferdinand joined their cause when the professor bested him at Myrrdin, but somehow, the image of Von Aegir’s son dying by Felix’s hand feels more like memory than make-believe. 

Still, the losses from those realities can hardly match up to what _this reality_ took from him. Felix’s mind drifts to the memory and snags on a terrifying thought. Felix moves his hand to the soft flesh below his sternum and imagines a blade splitting the skin there. A wound to match his father’s. 

Felix winces. He pushes the thought away. “That’s not what I—“ Felix furrows his brows, narrowed eyes staring at the bottom of his teacup. “That’s not what I _meant_.”

He should tell the professor about phantom wounds. Or, he could talk about the nightmares. Fingers splay over his throat, pressing down the soft skin of his neck. Perhaps he should admit to knowing what it feels to have his head swiped clean from his shoulders. The mere thought summons some surge of discomfort that forces his eyes shut, a veil of white static clouding a memory he isn’t sure is real.

“I’ve died many times, haven’t I?”

“Felix,” the professor says. “You’re not weaker for needing to be saved.”

That’s not the point, but it is.

So what of it now? Felix thinks back to the times he’s hacked at the training ground dummies without pause, desperate to hone his being into something more than what it was. _What is my hunger for?_ he remembers asking himself. See, they’ve solved that puzzle before: even now, there persisted a need to prove himself stronger than a brother who would never return. 

Maybe there was more to it than that. In the heat of battle, it felt less about worth and more about a role he claimed to renounce; how he would throw himself between a comrade and death, perhaps because there persisted a need to prove himself to a man who would never—

“There’s one thing I don’t understand about all of this,” Felix says.

“And that is?”

“Why couldn’t you save them?”

An eyebrow lifts. “Who?”

“Your father.” Felix takes a ragged breath. “ _Mine_.”

The professor grips the handle of the teacup, but does not move it from its place. Their roles are reversed, this time. It’s Felix staring intently, awaiting an answer, while the professor avoids his gaze.

“Know that I dislike sacrifice,” they say, finally. “The future of your nation hinged on a prince blinded by his own rage. If one lost life is what it takes to force his highness to see with clarity once more — then I would choose your nation’s future over that life.” They bite their lower lip in a barely-there display of shame. “I want to believe that Rodrigue would have been proud of that.”

His mind feels very far away from his body in the seconds that follow. 

A teacup falls from his hands and scatters ceramic shards when it fractures on impact. Whether the shattering was deliberate is something even Felix cannot say. He rises from his seat; the professor reaches for him — Felix draws back. His chest tightens. His body is anger and nothing else.

His hands clench. His knuckles strike the wall, almost hard enough to hurt, but Felix holds back his strength. It’s just enough to ground himself. His forehead rests against his curled fingers, as if gathering his scattered thoughts into his closed fist. It half works — when he puts in the effort he can produce a thought coherent enough for a sentence — except the words fall apart before his lips can give them shape. He breathes in, ragged and shallow.

“Felix,” the professor’s voice calls. 

“The soldiers under his command,” is the only thing his logical mind can produce. Felix lifts his head. His hand unfurls and splays its fingers across the wall, pushing him back. “They looked up to him. They relied on him. He wasn’t—“ _expendable_ . How could anyone think of human life as _expendable?_

“It was a calculated risk,” the professor says. The robotic way they offer their answer drives Felix to push his knuckles harder onto the stone. “The resources House Fraldarius provided were invaluable to the army, at the time. But I knew it wouldn’t be impossible to compensate for our losses. With His Highness returned, Fhirdiad would be easier to reclaim, thus—”

“Do you hear yourself right now?” Felix spins to face the professor. He can no longer mask the fury in his voice. “How did you know? How were you so sure that _that’s_ what would bring Dimitri back?” 

In this light, they look less than human. The stripe of sun cutting through the window makes green hair look golden. In their eyes, there is nothing. Not a shadow of a reaction. Not a gleam of empathy.

They say, “I had faith.”

Felix blinks. He can almost see them swirling from the professor’s palm — the wisps of purple that will rip this reality away. 

Before the professor can raise their hand, Felix grabs it. “Don’t.” He tightens his grip around their wrist. “You don’t get to take this away from me.”

A ragged sigh leaves the professor’s lips. They nod, and Felix loosens his grip, but does not let go.

They manage a hint of a frown. The performance of remorse. “If the choices I made brought you grief, then you have my apologies. Perhaps I failed to anticipate that you would react this way.” Something about their expression resembles confusion. “It always seemed to me that you hated your father.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. Like always, the anger Felix feels is bigger than him.

“You don’t know anything.”

**x.**

Some dreams have him tread the fields of Duscur. There are corpses strewn across the roadsides, but all of them are his. There’s a Felix slumped against a tree trunk, bleeding at the throat. Another Felix crumpled by the thickets, the back of his skull smashed in. Another body, limp, twisted, arrows sunken into his flesh. There are bodies limp as rags, their faces beaten beyond recognition. Soldiers with their skin burnt off, the furs on their backs charred black. A child, curled up, lying at his side as the Lance of Ruin skewers his abdomen, lifeless as the spearhead’s faint, orange glow illuminates the exit wound by his spine.

His eyes can only stand to spare brief glances. Each body is evidence of failure. Every step he takes reveals a new way to die. A sudden rush of revulsion crashes through him with every face he sees, summoning echoes of bloodstained memories — whether they’re real or not is something he cannot say. _I’ve died many times, haven’t I?_

Glazed with death, their gazes follow him. He feels their judgment, their shame. Felix does not beg, but in this dream, his corpses do; they hunger a certain vindication. _Tell me we’re stronger than this_ , his own voice echoes — faint and disembodied — from the maimed cadavers of younger Felixes. Decaying fingers reach for his boot; Felix kicks them away. _Tell me we didn’t fail._

He didn’t and he won’t and he can prove it. Sword in hand, he slogs forward, hacks at the masses of shrivelled hands that grasp at his feet before they can drag his still-living body into the carrion pile. Regret cannot cling to him, not now. There is somebody he still needs to see. 

Glenn leans against a tree trunk, his posture ever easy and uncaring. From a distance, he looks smaller, despite his imposing height. Up close, Glenn looks like a child, his sharp features alight with a bright sort of boyishness that Felix has only now noticed. The observation makes Felix wince, but only for a fleeting second; his usual scowl returns when Glenn meets his gaze with an almost-condescending smirk.

“If it isn’t wee little Fee,” he says. “Still minuscule as ever.

Felix grits his teeth. “Draw your sword.”

Glenn laughs. “No hello for your brother?”

“I don’t have time for your bullshit, Glenn,” Felix spits. “I said draw your sword.”

Glenn tilts his head in a way that makes Felix think he might throw another flippant quip at Felix’s expense. Except, Glenn’s face softens into an expression Felix can barely read. If he didn’t know Glenn better, Felix would call it _solemn_.

But soon he realizes he hadn’t had enough time to know Glenn very well at all. There’s a seriousness to his voice, only tempered by Glenn’s natural coolness. Glenn furrows his brows. “What do you think you’re going to get out of fighting me, Felix?”

“I just—“ He hates how Glenn’s presence makes words fail him. “I _have_ to.”

“You have to.” Dry as Glenn may sound, a certain sadness colours his words. “That’s very specific.”

The corpses crawl around them, grovelling at their feet. “I don’t need—“ Felix slashes an arm that has snaked around his calf “—to explain myself to you.”

“I know.” Glenn’s voice grows quiet. A corpse hooks its fingers around his leg and he doesn’t so much as flinch. “You have your reasons. I know what they are. I also winning against me won’t make anything hurt less.” His mouth presses into a thin line. “You know it too, deep down. I just want to hear you admit that.”

Felix heaves for breath. A corpse’s sharp nails sink into his leg. Thin fingers encircle the space of skin that starts where his trousers cut off; the bones tighten around his tendon. He grits his teeth. “Why do you care?”

“Felix,” Glenn starts, and softness with which he says his name is almost sufficient enough of a substitute for an honest, direct answer. A ghost of a smile forms on Glenn’s lips for a fleeting second before it fades completely, leaving nothing to mask the sadness in his eyes, downhearted, still, as he meets Felix’s gaze. More bodies swarm around them. “They’re not going to go away if you beat me.”

Felix staggers back. There are too many corpses. They climb his body and grip their withering parts around his limbs, ceaseless in their movement even when Felix wrenches himself violently away. A pair of hands wrap themselves his neck and sink their shrivelled fingers on the soft flesh of his throat. He opens his mouth, but a palm that is already half bone presses rotted skin over his lips before he can scream. Glenn reaches for him, and against his instincts, Felix reaches back, but the corpses lug him away, holding his thrashing body down until his struggles become futile, until he stops struggling, afraid and angry and ashamed as every rotted hand drags him down into the writhing sea of himself, into darkness.

There are uglier dreams in Gronder. There are less bodies in Gronder and it still hurts worse. He’s kneeling in Dimitri’s place during his father’s final moments, holding him steady as the man’s last breaths leave him. He lets Rodrigue lay his head on his shoulder — a borrowed gesture; something Rodrigue had done for him and Glenn when they were smaller and sleepier and needed a place to rest their heads on the long carriage ride home.

“I wish I could’ve done more for you,” Rodrigue says.

A lump forms on Felix’s throat. Something disquieting floods his chest — is it guilt? In a twisted way, Felix wishes his father be crueler, wishes Rodrigue would give him a cause to slide away from the discomforting realm of remorse, toward anger — because anger is all that he still understands.

Felix swallows. It’s hard to drag words out of his throat. “It was me that pushed you away.”

“But you needed me. And I knew that you needed me, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to approach you.” Rodrigue lets out a shallow breath. Then, “I should have tried harder.”

Felix’s brow creases. “What’s the point of telling me this now?”

“I was afraid you would think I did not love you.”

Felix lifts his head up. The sun sinks into the horizon of Gronder Field, painting the sky orange. It’s easier to look at that light than Rodrigue’s eyes. He searches his mind for a response, but what leaves his throat instead is a ghost of a disbelieving laugh. They‘ve never been good at affection, have they? Family had been a fractured word for so long that they no longer knew how to hold one another without bleeding.

He feels his father’s pulse beneath two fingers. It quickens, then slows to nothing. Rodrigue’s body stills and goes cold against Felix’s embrace. 

Felix kneels on the dirt, dead-eyed. The sky breaks open with rain, little dew drops spattering against his cheeks. Nobody really tells you how much it hurts when you forget how to cry. It means the poison of sadness no longer has any place to go, so it stays inside of you, festering.

So, what now? His father is dead in his arms. When his consciousness brushes against the realm of logic, small bits of reality return to him. His father is dead in his arms, but not really, because this is not his father, and these are not his father’s words. The truth goes more like this: His father is dead and Felix failed to see it happen. It’s too strange — the thrashing of his heart is never free to admit what it wants, but perhaps this time the longing was so large that the brain felt the need to invent it, to go and assemble a landscape where forgiveness was not impossible.

But his father is dead. The unsaid are buried with him.

The worst dreams are forgotten memories. Felix is nine years old. He and Glenn visit Fhirdiad with Sylvain and Ingrid. They’re at the training grounds of royal family’s palace, and Dimitri has just snapped Felix’s sword in half. Dimitri is stammering out a thousand frantic _I’m sorry’s,_ but they all fall on deaf ears, not because Felix doesn’t want to listen, but because his heart is in his throat and he cannot quiet its need to wail. When Felix grips the hilt of his now-broken sword and struggles to blink his watery eyes dry, Glenn does not mock him, like Felix expects. Instead, Glenn spares him a brief, unreadable glance, then shoots an impish look at Sylvain, who nods in response. Glenn throws a light punch at Dimitri‘s shoulder, and Dimitri — who also looks to be on the verge of tears — looks up at him, apologetic and confused.

Glenn looks like a smaller version of their father, with the way his face softens into something open and amiable. He points at Dimitri’s lance. “Will you let me borrow that?”

Dimitri, still shaken, nods. Glenn smiles and takes it, gesturing for Ingrid and Sylvain to come closer. He whispers something in Ingrid’s ear. Sylvain folds his arms. Felix casts a dew-eyed look at him, but Sylvain only smirks, shooting a wink that makes something in Felix’s ribs stutter for a devastating second.

Before Felix can make sense of what’s happening, Glenn grips Dimitri’s lance by the neck and calls Ingrid. “Hold the non-pointy end,” he says when she approaches, speaking in the warm voice he reserves for only her. “And don’t try to push it toward me. I’m not trying to get impaled, here.”

It looks like a game of tug-of-war, with how they’re pulling the spear by either side. Ingrid and Glenn crouch down and raise the pole just half a foot above the floor, which makes Felix shoot a look at Dimitri, who shrugs, looking just as confused as Felix is.

“Felix,” Glenn calls. He gestures to the middle of the pole. “Stand between us.”

He obeys. Sylvain comes up behind him, standing a few steps away. 

“I want you to jump,” Glenn says, extending his arm to tap the center of the lance, “on top of this.”

Felix stares at him, puzzled. Confusion overtakes him for a fleeting moment, but Glenn wears his kindest grin — not the slight, mocking curl of the lip that Felix is used to, but something warmer; it splits across his face and reaches his eyes, so easy and open and reassuring that Felix could almost hear Glenn saying the unsaid out loud: _I’m on your side, Felix. Always._

“How high?” Felix asks.

“As high as you can,” Glenn tells him. “Throw your whole crest into it.”

They both smile. 

With one, deep breath, Felix launches himself upward, the bright blue glow of his crest lighting the space above him just as his feet crash into the lance’s wooden center, snapping the weapon in half. He staggers when he lands and laughs as he falls backwards into Sylvain’s arms.

Glenn takes one snapped lance half and tosses it by Dimitri’s side. The prince is just beginning to process what just happened. When it finally hits, Dimitri’s reaction is slow to arrive, one chuckle after the next until he pitches his body forward in a burst of laughter.

“There,” Glenn tells Felix. “You’re even now.”

Later, Glenn badgers their father about taking them to the marketplace against Rodrigue’s protests about being too busy and having enough swords at home (“Why are you always so lame, old man?”), then _Felix_ badgers Rodrigue about taking them to the marketplace because Glenn says they’ll win the argument if it’s two versus one (“Yeah. Dimitri’s old man is always busy but he’s not even half as lame as you, father.”) and when their collective insults (“Felix. I know what we should call him.” “What?” “King _Lame-_ bert.”) devolve into ceaseless chanting ( _“King Lame-bert! King Lame-bert! King Lame-bert!”_ ), Rodrigue sighs and relents and buys them new blades on the very strict condition that they will never utter the phrase ‘King Lame-bert’ ever again.

It’s late when they get back to Fraldarius. Felix crashes into his mattress while Glenn slides onto the bed next to his, slipping under the sheets before grabbing a book from his bedside table. Felix eyes the cover — _The Sword of Kyphon_ — and quietly says that he would like to hear the story, too. When Rodrigue enters and reminds them not to stay up too up too late so they can get enough rest for tomorrow’s training, Glenn tosses the book into his hands and says, _then bore us to sleep with your voice, old man._

And Rodrigue does. By the third page, Glenn has already dozed off. Felix drifts away with his father’s words, but not so deeply that his half-open eyes don’t catch the way father slides the book back on Glenn’s bedside before retreating to the bedroom door, careful not to let the hinges creak when he pulls the knob open. He pauses by the exit. A small smile forms on Rodrigue’s lips. There’s something in his eyes. It’s smaller than pride. Quieter than joy. Something deeper than warmth and larger than fondness. Something like love.

In the present, Felix wakes up alone.

**xi.**

When his classmates die, Sylvain is the first to notice.

Not like loss is anything unexpected. Sylvain has watched, with grief and disdain, how his country raises its children. Faerghus is mother that holds her young the way a knight would hold the hilt of their blade. Its men never learn that there are ways to love without become somebody else’s weapon.

Felix claims otherwise, but he is much the same. Sylvain learns it in the cruelest way.

It happens too quickly — the boy he loves throws himself in front of his brother’s lance; Sylvain reaches for him, but something yanks the moment from reality, and before any of them can process it, the Sword of the Creator whips the Lance of Ruin away from Miklan’s grasp. When Sylvain turns his head, Felix is alive beside him, and somebody else is named his savior. 

Sylvain only loses a brother, but his grief feels twice as heavy. The rest of them forget. Sylvain tries not to. When the archbishop surrenders his family’s relic, a beast of a memory overtakes him; Felix, lifeless, the same bone spearhead splitting a wound through his skin. Sylvain sinks his nails into the memory before divinity can pry it away.

But the memory escapes him, and all that remains is the sense that something is wrong.

It’s not just Felix, though. A bandit‘s blade through Annette’s throat, but Sylvain finds her in the greenhouse the next day, singing a tune about swamp beasts. A sniper’s arrow sends Ingrid falling from her Pegasus, but she rises the next morning to scold Sylvain about slacking off. The children of Faerghus do not fear death when love needs them. Over and over, Dedue throws his life away for Dimitri, and over and over, Dimitri throws his life away for nothing.

Sylvain doesn’t remember dying. He’s sure it’s happened, though. Maybe because he thinks about it too much. Maybe because he’s tired. Maybe because war is ugly but so is home, and he’s damned himself into clinging onto the faint, bloodstained flashes of realities that no longer were. 

Somewhere, someone is writing stories of how they triumphed, so that before the next war comes, their nation can breed a new generation of children who dream of dying young.

At the Rhodos coast, small troops from Gautier and Fraldarius cut down the last of the empire’s loyalists. Sylvain fakes a smile and commends his men on a job well done, then orders them to return to their territory. He doesn’t follow them to the carriages. Slogging through the sand, he follows the line of the coast toward a familiar silhouette. 

Felix looks different. The usual tenseness that consumes and defines him is absent. There’s a very faraway look to him, his dead-eyed gaze fixed on the clearing sky. Wordlessly, Sylvain crosses to sit on the space beside him.

The sun dips into the horizon, bleeding orange light into the waters. The waves push and pull, cycling between sweeping over their boots and crashing back into the foam. Sylvain puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder. Felix does not look at him. 

Voice raised barely above a whisper, Sylvain says. “Felix, we have to go.”

He ends the sentence without supplying a destination. _Home_ , was what he was supposed to say. _We have to go home._ But for both of them, home was a loaded word, synonymous with broken. The difference was that Fraldarius’s brokenness was the kind that could be fixed, until war took the word and spilt blood over it, painting a new definition: empty.

Felix pulls his knees to his chest. He says, “I don’t think I’m good for anything other than fighting.”

Sylvain blinks. A protest forms at the tip of his tongue, but his throat settles on silence. Perhaps his words are only beautiful when they mean nothing. 

Everything in him feels charged. Sylvain shifts his body closer. He turns to meet Felix’s gaze. Felix does not protest when Sylvain thumbs a strand of hair behind his ear, but he does cast his faraway glance to the sand when the heel of Sylvain’s palm moves to wipe a smear of blood off his cheek.

This close, Sylvain can feel everything without looking. The flush of Felix’s body, the stammer of his heart. Sylvain bites his lip. Every self-loathing instinct demands that he pull away.

He doesn’t. Sylvain inches closer, placing a gentle finger under Felix’s chin to lift it up, turning his head slightly so that Felix meets his expression. Their eyes linger on one another, and for once, Felix does not break his gaze.

Faerghus claims that dying for another was the greatest act of love one could commit. But death is not terrifying and Sylvain is not brave, and maybe throwing his body in the path of a blade is less about courage and more about exhaustion. Sylvain is no good, and he knows it, and sometimes no part of him feels worthy of life, but perhaps he is learning to fall out of love with dying. The thrum of his heart wants to drag his body toward their uncertain tomorrows, where their living hands can cross out this nation’s lexicon of violence and write love a kinder definition. 

Felix kisses him.

When he pulls away, Sylvain lets him rest his head on the flat of his chest. The urge to kiss him again charges through his body. But Felix buries his face into the crook of his neck, spilling small tears into his skin. Sylvain wraps one arm tightly around his body, while his free hand moves to cradle the back of his head.

Love, Sylvain thinks, is a feeling and a vow. Here is what it says: there are many tomorrows and none promise kindness. They will survive them all.

**xii.**

Nations do not heal so easily. Much work must be done to sever every cycle, to strip the kingdom of its inheritance of violence, but the survivors pour themselves into their efforts; they build and mend and teach and learn and fumble through their faults until they can look at the landscape they’ve assembled say, with certainty, that their children will wake up to their promise of a kinder future.

Felix wakes up curled against Sylvain’s body every morning for the next sixty years. Ugly memories never really go away, but they do quiet down with time, and whenever a new nightmare intrudes their peace, they are there to hold one another through it. 

Sometimes age makes him conflate promises with facts. “I hope you get a heart attack soon,” Felix grumbles as he slides two cups of tea on the table’s wooden surface. “We’ve been on this earth for too fucking long.”

The groaning earns a smile from Sylvain, warm and amiable. Even after nearly six decades of living with one another, Felix still finds himself coming undone at that smile, heart skittering involuntarily against his ribs. He brings his cup to his lips, hiding the flush of red that rises to his cheeks when he feels the softness of Sylvain’s gaze rest on him — tender, grateful, _adoring_. 

The teasing grin spreads wider across Sylvain’s wrinkled face.“What makes you so sure you’ll die the moment I do?”

His cocksure tone makes Felix’s eyes roll. “If you get to leave this shithole before me,” Felix says after thumping his cup down the table, “I’ll start swinging fists at the goddess.” 

Sylvain arches an eyebrow. “You’re saying you can’t beat the goddess in a fight?”

Felix narrows his eyes. “I have arthritis, you fucking idiot.”

Sylvain breaks into soft, graceless laughter. Felix dips his head and puts a hand over his face to hide a crooked smile. It fails to evade Sylvain, who brings his face closer and tilts his head, cornering him with a crooked grin.

They ride off to the center of their joint territory later that day. Sylvain helps Felix up the carriage and lets him rest his head on his shoulder when they sit down. From the window, they watch the flowers blur into colourful stripes when the horses drag the car swiftly forward. 

This peace park was Sylvain’s idea, built under the sentiment that it would be better to be known for the good they had done and not just the bad that they had survived. Here, beds of flowers creep over the ruins of old battlefields, planted there by the war’s survivors, who wanted to sew the promise of a colourful future into the soil of a dismal past. Felix pushes open the carriage door and takes Sylvain’s hand, walking with him through the pavements as they make their way toward a bridge over the pond.

Today’s children do not dream of dying young. The old are trying to build a world where they no longer have to. Close by, a young father is teaching his daughter how to fish. Small children throw crumbs of bread at the ducklings floating by. There are boys by the banks sailing paper boats; one of them tries to hide the motion of a wind spell when the others aren’t looking and grins impishly when his craft leads the race. Felix laughs.

There’s no foreseeing what new catastrophe tomorrow will bring, but when Felix circles Sylvain’s wrist and feels the thrum of his pulse beneath his thumb, a quiet sort of joy overtakes him. They are _alive_. That much is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I was really, really into Russian Doll when the Three Houses commercials were dropping, so when the ads introduced the Divine Pulse dynamic, I wanted to play around with a similar concept. What if time travel wasn't consequence-free? What if the trauma of dying was so severe that it stayed with people, even time has been reversed? It was something I've long wanted to write about, and there was no better character to focus on than Felix. Felix, who defines himself by his strength but is shaped by his grief. Felix, who loves people who don't exactly love being alive and are very willing to throw their lives away whether it's in the name of love or self-hatred. Felix, who I have been stupidly obsessed with for over half a year even though he has the personality of a geriatric chihuahua. He's been a joy and a pain to write. I hope you enjoyed him too.
> 
> Special thanks to Halyn, Hayley, Winter, and Bri for taking the time to read this monsterfic before I released it to the wild.
> 
> I have a twitter [@falcoknighted!](https://twitter.com/falcoknighted)


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